In preliminary conclusions released today, the presidential panel investigating BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill focused on the technical causes of the Gulf blowout, and said it had found no evidence that BP took shortcuts by prioritizing cost over safety when drilling the well.

“To date we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,” Fred Bartlit Jr., an investigator for the panel, said in hearings today.

Lawmakers earlier this summer also flagged the desire to save time and money as a factor in the Gulf disaster. “BP repeatedly chose risky procedures in order to reduce costs and save time and made minimal efforts to contain the added risk,” the House Energy and Commerce Committee wrote in a letter to then-CEO Tony Hayward this June.

The committee also released internal company emails that showed BP employees discussing well design options and noting that the design of the Macondo well “saves lots of time … at least 3 days.” The other option being considered, according to the House committee, would have cost $7 to $10 million more.

According to the Houston Chronicle’s FuelFix blog, Bartlit did acknowledge that the costs of the Macondo project may have been at the back of some workers’ minds, but that the decision-making by workers was more complicated than simply cost concerns overriding safety: Workers “want to be efficient, and they don’t want to waste money, but they don’t want their buddies to get killed,” Bartlit said.

The final round of spill hearings will continue into tomorrow. For more of ProPublica's coverage of BP's Gulf disaster—and the company's track record elsewhere—check our Gulf Oil Spill page.

4 comments

Surprise. Surprise. There is no smoking gun, no time when someone has been found to have said, “This will cost too much. We won’t do it. We need to get this well online NOW.”

This misunderstands the way that complex bureaucracies manage complex industrial processes. Of course there is no single person responsible for BP’s miserable safety record. OF course there is no memo saying “We don’t care about safety, leave that broken gas detector alone. It costs too much to fix.” OF course the workers on the rig didn’t cut corners and put their and their friends lives at risk.. But they had to meet schedules set by their superiors on the mainland. Maintenance budgets were simply cut with no comment, leaving the blowout preventer without a functioning battery, for instance.

This brings up a question: what was the ignoring of the tests that showed the cement used to cap the well was substandard, if not putting profits before safety?

This smells like a whitewash to me…...

[for the sake of full disclosure: I grew up in New Orleans, and still have family there. I’m predisposed to see them all-government and corporation- as lying dogs. This preliminary report just reinforces my attitude.

What if the culture of the company has ingrained a philosophy of maximizing profits at the neglect of safety, on its employees? That would eliminate the need for any “conscious decisions to favor dollars over safety”. Based on the Fed Panels ruling, it would subsequently eliminate any accountability as well. Brilliant.

What if the culture of the company has ingrained a philosophy of maximizing profits at the neglect of safety, on its employees? That would eliminate any “conscious decisions to favor dollars over safety”. Based on the Fed panels ruling, it would subsequently eliminate any accountability as well. Brilliant.

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